William John Locke

“ Kent was tenderness, manly sympathy itself: he would have cut his tongue out rather than formulate a longing that could not be satisfied. But moments came when the irony of life seemed somewhat bitterly mocking, and caused a veil of sadness to be drawn between them. And like people who love deeply each was sensitive to the variations in the other's mood. Then Clytie would yearn for the impossible: to fix forever the light she loved to see in his eyes, to cling to his arm and be acknowledged his wife before all the world. Thus through the midst of their happy, earnest life ran a vein of sorrow. ”

“ The sooner the struggle began and the fiercer it was fought the sooner would come success. It behoved Clytie, therefore, to enter upon it with him at once. Before she could realise herself as mistress of a large house, as cut off from the old habits that had invested London with earnest charm, as sundered from Kent and Winifred, as deprived of her art and her dreams and ambition, she found herself caught up in the whirl of London society, bidden to cultivate its conventions, flatter its weaknesses, intrigue, gossip, dance, drive, rush, without a moment's pause to think. ”

“ If you will meet me now and again after this, freely, at the houses of our common friends, you shall only see the old Kent who now and then scolded you, sometimes helped you, and who always held you dearer and higher and grander than all other women; and yet you must let yourself be loved—that I cannot help. It is fused into my being, and it gives me happiness in my own way. I am an oddity, you know, Clytie, as you yourself have called me, and oddities have their little privileges, and if you know that it makes my happiness, and does not grudge you yours, you will not find it hard to be loved. ”

“ Would she continue to reckon herself an artist at all, or would she only degenerate into the amateur—painting little meaningless pictures for amusement? And at the end of a year would she not stand face to face with a new Clytie, paler, more shadowy, and therefore less insistently demanding self-expression? Even these few weeks had changed her: what would she be at the end of one year, two years, twenty years? Happier, with all her old cravings satisfied, with her individuality worked out to its fullest, with the riddle of life joyously solved? ”

“ One must live. Higher art, to use the cant phrase, would satisfy one's soul's needs better—but it would not those of the body.”
Redgrave looked at her for a moment, as if meditating over her rich colouring and fine vitality. A body such as hers had its needs. He smiled a little sadly and shook his head.
“You would not sacrifice your life for your art?”
“No,” replied Clytie, with quick frankness, “I wouldn't. The fuller one's life, the fuller one's art. The one is a reflection of the other. ”

“ And as you in your goodness offer me a resumption of the old friendship, I must say it once and for all. I love you, Clytie, with all the strength of a man who has allowed women to take up very little part in his life. I loved you long before I knew it. It grew up gradually during our intercourse, and only one day when you were at Durdleham a little, little chance circumstance revealed to me that you were not only the grand, sweet friend, but the woman that I passionately loved. And I could not tell you for fear of paining you and destroying our friendship—for what was I to love you? ”

“ He could not open the window, for the sleet and rain were beating against the panes. He stopped for a moment watching the water dribble outside down the glass. Then he turned away impatiently, seeking solace from his book-backs and pictures. But they seemed to look back upon him unsympathetically, as if reproaching him for the bare floor, the untidy dresser, and the cheerless hearth. He rekindled his fire, filled a pipe, and sat down to think.
Kent was not given to introspection. His external interests in life were too engrossing for him to think deeply or continuously about himself. ”

“ It is the fundamental law of sex. Only when the sentimentalities and more delicate affinities come into play, when the needs of the finer animal man begin to cry after their satisfying, does love leave its simple phase and gird itself with its infinite many-coloured web of complexities. At first the mind may see the web glimmering in a far-away twilight—but heeds it not as long as the sense is held captive.
Two remarkable personalities had met, Thornton Hammerdyke and Clytie. With the intensity of a strong animal nature he had fallen in love with her, with her beauty, charm, and directness. ”

“ Often when life seemed to weigh a little heavy, the future to loom somewhat sad, and Kent and Clytie had been sitting alone, a spell of wistful silence over them, Wither would come in unexpectedly, and, with his subtle feminine perception piercing to the heart of their mood, would exert himself to extra brilliancy and dissipate their cloud in laughter. A man by no means requires delicate tact to win a woman's love, but no man who displays it towards a woman can fail of winning a little of the overflow of her heart. ”

“ Clytie leaned back in her chair, caressing her friend's cheek with the back of her hand, and looked around the studio. It came almost as a shock to her to realise that in a short, short time she would have to bid farewell to all that had grown up around her artistic life. The grotesque caricatures on the walls stared at her like meaningless shadows. Her palette, brushes, and paraphernalia of rags and turpentine bottles lay strewn about like the properties of a forgotten comedy. The unfinished pictures on easels and stands lost their fascination. ”

“ As Kent entered she pushed back her chair and looked up at him, a gleam of gladness eclipsing in her eyes a late expression of pain. Kent noticed the sudden change.
“You have been sad, Clytie,” he said in his rough tenderness. “That is not right. Did you not promise me last evening that you would be happy, very happy?”
“So I shall be,” she answered, taking his hand in hers and turning away her head. “Only there are things that cut one to the heart. You are a man; you can't understand a woman—no man can, no matter how he loves her. ”

“ Clytie was almost sorry when the cab stopped at the familiar side-door next to the shop where the legend of “Gurkins, green-grocer,” was dimly visible through the gloom. Much of the mere woman in her had risen to the surface, obscuring the artist, the hater of formulas, the restless seeker after the mysteries of life. She had felt childish, frivolous, thus appearing in a new light to Kent, not without a certain charm, although he wondered to himself whether she, after all, was not like the rest of womankind—“fundamentally silly.” ”

“ They stayed in Paris a couple of days and then continued their journey to the Riviera. It was Clytie's own desire. In the first flush of his passion all places were alike to Thornton, provided she were with him. But she longed to get away from England, to cut herself adrift for a while from all old associations, to surround herself with new conditions, so that nothing should disturb the wonder of this new love. And when, with a lover's hyperbole, he had bidden her choose any spot on the whole terrestrial globe for the passing of their honeymoon, she had selected the Mediterranean. ”

“ A glance was sufficient to tell Kent who Clytie's visitor was—it had not occurred to him before to conjecture. His heart sank as he realised the splendid physique and proud, masterful bearing of his rival. Ordinarily the least observant of men in such matters, Kent noted the careless ease with which he wore his faultless attire. The patent-leather boots, the new silk hat, the well-cut frock-coat with an orchid in the buttonhole, the new gray Suède gloves grasped along with a gold-mounted malacca—all seemed to belong to the man naturally, to be the world's fit adjuncts to the gifts of nature. ”

“ In spite of a hopeless, passionate love Kent was still a happy man.
And now this spell of her influence was broken, or at least modified. He had seen her, felt the softness of her voice, the kindliness of her eyes. And he had unwittingly betrayed his secret. She knew that he loved her. She pitied him, promised that he should see her frequently on the basis of the old friendship. It was kind and generous, he thought, to step down from the height of her wedded felicity to comfort him with her friendship and sympathy. An unexpected happiness was in store for him. ”

“ Her marriage sometimes appeared to Clytie as a far-away episode, a kind of dream state in which she had been invested with a strange, unrealisable personality. Yet influences had remained, impulses had been awakened, that could not again lie dormant; knowledge had come to her that could not lapse into oblivion, leaving no trace behind. In her daily intercourse with Kent her nature expanded. It lost imperceptibly that vein of hardness which her struggle for self-development had fostered, and the disillusions and repugnances of her marriage had gradually been strengthening. ”

“ This perpetual stimulus was necessary to her art, which drooped helpless in the quiet country town. And with the thrill of artistic quickening came the buoyant, vigorous pulsation of youth. Her tread was elastic, her cheeks and eyes animated. She had forgotten her irritation of the morning in the sense of vitality and enjoyment. It was a good thing to be young, with a purpose in life and the freedom and strength to carry it out. Clytie tasted a rare happiness that afternoon, one of which the high gods are very sparing. ”

“ And so with the collective life that surged beneath Clytie's window, yielding blindly to the unchanging laws that direct the cosmos. If this movement was meaningless and vain, then did the stars wander futilely in their courses. Sin and shame and misery, love and laughter and happiness, what did they matter in the progress of collective life? They are internal forces affecting its resistless march as little as the incessant motion of men affects the rotation of the earth. ”

“ And then Kent bluntly insisted upon an arrangement whereby they divided equally the rent of the rooms they inhabited. It was not fair, he maintained, that he should give her sitting-room all that wear and tear without helping to pay for it. Clytie yielded, not unpleasurably, seeing that he was bent upon it, but she reserved the studio as her own especial sanctum.
The charm of the life grew daily upon Kent, with its infinite grace of little things. He told her this often, with awkward sincerity, as a man can only tell the woman he loves deeply. ”

“ Was not Kent right when he accused her of making her art a stepping-stone instead of an end?
Kent, manlike, and honester, too, than most men, was unconscious of this self-abasement. Since the day of that fierce struggle with herself which had resulted in her sending him the missive of submission he had vaguely felt that she was dependent on him for many things; but he had helped her in his frank, unquestioning way, feeling pleased, warmed by the flame of a newly kindled spark of vanity. He preached to her his simple doctrine.
“Work while work pleases you. Love it for its own sake. ”

“ The throbbing page had been presented to Clytie for one sharp moment, blazing, the while, in letters of flame. Such knowledge changes lingering girlhood into womanhood without the aid of passion. It changes sex-pride into sex-sorrow—in higher natures, be it understood. And this sex-sorrow runs in channels hollowed out by ever-varying circumstance and temperament. It flows in the patient, all-enduring devotion of the sister labouring among outcasts, in the militant enthusiasm of the social reformer. It quivers in the hearts of teachers like George Eliot and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. ”